Recommend a watch

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Nice. Where did you get it at?

As I noted..."$60 on eBay". There's still bunches of them available there; just search for "Palm watch". 8mb will store a surprising amount of data on PalmOS. Probably a lot more than you're willing to read on a screen of that size. :-)

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by wolf

My favorite Casio watch (and the one I was saddest to see go) was the one that was featured in the movie "Blue Thunder."

http://tinyurl.com/8kkel links to a nerd discussion that identifies said watch as "either a Casio AX-510, AX-250, or AX-210"

I wore a Casio DBC-1500 for years until the Abacus WristPDA (Palm Watch) displaced it. Still have the Casio, of course, and it's still running.


Oh, here's a pic of the WristPDA:

[Griff]

ML- Can you give me a run down on your likes/dislikes on your Fossil?

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

As I noted..."$60 on eBay". There's still bunches of them available there; just search for "Palm watch". 8mb will store a surprising amount of data on PalmOS. Probably a lot more than you're willing to read on a screen of that size. :-)

I know, I have a Handspring Visor. I did get an 8mb extension card for it. Too bad it won't fit on the watch.

Mobipocket has a free digital reader for Palm. They also have some public domain books as free downloads for the reader as well as scientific and financial calculator and conversion software (angles, radiation, electronics, calories, etc). Sort by "book" size to have the calculators show up at the top. They may still have free publishing software that would convert any text document into an e-book with a table of contents. If the book isn't too large, it can fit into the 8mb.

Free books I downloaded from them included Alice in Wonderland, The Oz books, Sherlock Holmes, Sun Tzu, and the Eightfold Path.

It would be interesting to read it on a 180x180 screen, but some books like Sun Tzu and the Eightfold Path can be broken into paragraphs and still retain their meaning.

I did put a bix in on an FX2008. From what I can see, the Palm watches go from AU2005-AU2008 and FX2005-FX2008. Looking at the technical specs, I can't see any difference. Is it only style issues or are there technical features that are different?

[wolf]

8MB was the same amount of memory that I had on my Palm IIIxe, which was an impossibly huge amount in those days ... my boss has an original USRobotics Palm Pilot that still mostly works and he wont' replace, probably because his wife wants something more than he does, and he's well, pretty much whipped. If the wife hadn't gotten addicted to the internet he'd still have a 486 computer. Whoops. The original USR PalmPilot had 1 MB.

Avantgo has a Classic Books page now. I am rereading Alice in Wonderland. They do a book of the month thing, but you can read stuff from their back-catalog as well.

Of course Docs-to-Go lets you read anything from the Gutenburg Project, so you're not really limited.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Cash is dead.

I carry my identity around with me at all times, as it is inherently part of my history and personality and consciousness.

Alright, fine fine. But hear me out, here. I think the watch is the last vestige of dressing to look good, even in everyday situations. We really don't need watches -- we can tell what time it is through all of the other devices we interact with on a daily basis, so a watch is really nothing more than jewellery. I'm always confused to see people wearing digital watches a-la 1984 or people buying into the pda-combo idea. Most digital watches, being plastic, have the appearance of a cereal box freebie and a PDA on your wrist is just another unneeded, junky piece of electronic excess. Imagine if other pieces of jewellery worked the same way: Would you give a woman an engagement ring that lights up and flashes different colors? Should a man's ring scroll the time and play music when it is time for him to go to a meeting?

Well, okay, don't answer those questions. Still, I don't wear anything more dressy than khakis and a polo on a daily basis, but I wouldn't be caught wearing a watch with a black plastic band or something that connects to a computer. The wristwatch, aside from a ring, is the last piece of decent looking substance men wear these days. Digital displays are okay if you're five and know it is time to go when "the little hand being on the eight" and watches with calculators and computer displays haven't been acceptable since 1986. Some of the watches you guys are suggesting are proof that the last thread of fashion decency is dead.

The next thing you know, straight guys will take to wearing pink shirts and acting as if it were normal.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

I'm always confused to see people wearing digital watches a-la 1984

These are back and I think it's neat.

[Happy Monkey]

LCD to LED
What a difference a letter makes.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Mobipocket has a free digital reader for Palm. They also have some public domain books as free downloads for the reader as well as scientific and financial calculator and conversion software (angles, radiation, electronics, calories, etc).

Yes, doc readers are almost as numerous as doc formats for PalmOS. Currently in the watch I'm carrying eReader for the "Aportis" doc format and Plucker for anything else, with conversion being done with an aging copy of JPluck.

Originally Posted by richlevy

I did put a bix in on an FX2008. From what I can see, the Palm watches go from AU2005-AU2008 and FX2005-FX2008. Looking at the technical specs, I can't see any difference. Is it only style issues or are there technical features that are different?

So far the models I've seen are all the same gutswise. Mine claims to be an AU5005.

Originally Posted by Griff

ML- Can you give me a run down on your likes/dislikes on your Fossil?

To be honest; it's a bit of a Talking Dog. ("It's not that the dog says anything interesting, but that he can talk at all.")

It's certainly suboptimal that it needs to be allowed to charge fairly often (I do it every night)...although the fact that it will do so from any USB port takes some of the sting out. And since I have an unreasonable fetish about precise time, a watch trhat automatically keeps it self synched to the NBS standard (through my Ubuntu Linux box) is kinda fun. Calendar alarms *always* launch simultaneously if I'm wearing the watch at my desk.

I find it tricky to do any but the briefest text input on it, but that's partly because my full-size Palm III XE (in my purse) uses a different gesture language, to which I long ago became adjusted. If I have to take notes I know I'll want in digital form I'll use the XE and beam them to the watch.

My personal schedule has moved to the watch though.

It's been an odd pleasure that I now see an analog watch face (sometimes the one this fellow is demonstrating)

when I look at my wristwatch...it subtly influneces how you think about time in ways I can't quite put my finger on. Yet when the geek impulse strikes, there's always Cesuim a button-push away...

Originally Posted by wolf

8MB was the same amount of memory that I had on my Palm IIIxe, which was an impossibly huge amount in those days ... my boss has an original USRobotics Palm Pilot that still mostly works and he wont' replace, probably because his wife wants something more than he does, and he's well, pretty much whipped. If the wife hadn't gotten addicted to the internet he'd still have a 486 computer.

Which is a twist on the usual "if he hadn't gotten addicted to the Internet, he'd still have a wife". My own Palm III XE is still a permanent part of my purse-stuff...along with a Leatherman Wave and a cute little video/still/audio recorder that uses SD cards.

My lifepartner Gwen has a Sony Clie TJ25...for a while it was her only WiFi device, and it has a MemoryStick slot. Makes a decent portable media player...and for Yule I gifted her with a Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2...essentially a PVR that uses MemSticks or CF cards as storage. ( http://tinyurl.com/82nms ) The plans Neuros has for the model 3 are quite ambitious. ( http://tinyurl.com/agvk6 )

Originally Posted by Kitsune

We really don't need watches -- we can tell what time it is through all of the other devices we interact with on a daily basis, so a watch is really nothing more than jewellery. Some of the watches you guys are suggesting are proof that the last thread of fashion decency is dead.

I don't consider a watch to be "nothing more than jewelry"...it had bloody well do more than just "tell time" (with some feeble level of precision, no doubt) to justify a place on my body.

And *my* USB thumb is carried in my purse next to my Swiss Army Knife, not *on* it, which I do agree is lame. My SAK is the Space Shuttle crew-issue model...a classic, now unobtainable, and not to be trifled with.

Between the USB thumb and the DV cam, there's a gig of storage in my purse.

[richlevy]

Well, my FX2008 is on the way. It appears that 2008 was the last model in the series, so I hope this means the 'least buggy'.

[SteveDallas]

Here you go, Tony.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/dec05/380272.asp
(via Fark)

[xoxoxoBruce]

Pulsar is coming!

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Pulsar is coming!

But wait seven years and you can have an HP-01!

HP decided to sell the HP-01 only through selected watch shops, not through their usual calculator dealers. Watch shops had mostly not heard of HP before, nor had many of their customers, and the HP-01 watches were expensive - $650 for the steel case version and $750 for the gold version. (These prices were raised to $695 and $850 on 1 July 1978.) This meant that sales were low. HP has not released sales statistics but in 1994 an HP employee posted a message on the Usenet area comp.sys.hp.misc about this. The message said that a total of about 50,000 HP-01s had been made, of which about a half had been purchased by a Saudi prince. Half the rest were sold through shops, then the remainder were sold to HP employees at a clearance price of $180 (the message did not specify if the steel and gold versions were both sold at the same price).

[SteveDallas]

Arrrgh! I'd get hit that.

Where's the "enter" key? Shouldn't an HP calculator watch use RPN?

[richlevy]

Wow! $1500 for the Pulsar digital in 1970. Today at work a co-worker gave me a digital tic-tac watch/stopwatch. He has been getting them free in six packs of Tic Tac mints. At this point he has given about a dozen away.

It probably has more features than the Pulsar.